


Titinius, If Thou Lovest Me...

by planet_plantagenet



Category: Julius Caesar - Shakespeare
Genre: Ghosts, M/M, Suicide, War, i would add more tags but i don't want to spoil it, this is very sad and i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 17:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11384940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/planet_plantagenet/pseuds/planet_plantagenet
Summary: Cassius is a very sad ghost.Basically a sequel to my other Cassius/Titinius fic: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11353548(it's recommended but not necessary that you read that one first)





	Titinius, If Thou Lovest Me...

For a second, I had absolutely no idea what was going on.

I could see the body of a man lying on the ground below me, a glazed look in his eyes, blood oozing from a wound in his side. Muffled shouts rang from the base of the hill upon which I was apparently situated. As I watched, two other armored men sprinted up the hill, coming to an abrupt halt as they sighted the body. One—the shorter of the two, with shoulder-length hair and no beard—rushed forward immediately, checking for a pulse.

_ Titinius, _ my subconscious told me.

And suddenly I realized that the dead body was my own.

My previous calm vanished as the memories came back to me, a flood of anxiety replacing it. I was dead. And as I waved my hands in front of my face—pale, transparent, slightly glowing hands—it became clear that I was some sort of ghost.

But Titinius hadn’t been taken. He and Messala were clearly fine.

Oh gods. I’d acted on an impulse, a misconstruction of Pindarus’. And here I was. For all the times I’d talked of killing myself, I’d actually gone through with the action. And now I couldn’t go back.

What would Brutus think? What would he do? Would he cry? Somehow I doubted it.

Titinius, however, was indeed crying—silent tears cascaded down his face as he addressed Messala. He obviously couldn’t see my ghost form, hovering a couple feet behind him. My blood was staining his clothing, but he took no notice—bending over my body to stare into my lifeless eyes, a trembling hand caressing my pale cheek. I shivered. The sight was horrible and unnatural, and Titinius’ anguish was almost more unbearable.

My hands caught my attention once more, and I shifted my gaze. My incorporeal ghost-body was no longer glowing as brightly as before. Was I fading away? The thought sent a jolt of panic through me. How fast was I fading? Where would I go? Would I be able to come back again?

Messala’s sudden departure pulled my focus back to Titinius. He was alone now. But instead of searching for Pindarus as he’d promised a second before, he pressed closer to my dead body, whispering to me as if I were alive. I crouched down next to him, my heart breaking a little bit more with every word he spoke.

“Titinius,” I said quietly.

He didn’t look up. He couldn’t hear me.

“Please, Titinius, I’m right here—” I raised my voice, but it did no good. Titinius was focused on his task—gently laying a laurel wreath on the head of my corpse.

And as I looked down at myself, my light had faded even more.

“Titinius! I don’t have much time!” I brushed a hand against his shoulder. No response. Titinius’ eyes had wandered to my sword, still glistening red with my blood.

No. No. He couldn’t. I remembered back to our last conversation, where I’d made Titinius promise not to kill himself if I died. With a sinking feeling, I realized I’d phrased the request wrong: “if one of Antony’s soldiers manages to kill me.” Should that matter?

Titinius picked up the sword. His eyes flickered from its tip, to the wound in my side, to my lifeless face.

“Titinius! You promised!” I tried to shake him, to pull the weapon from his hands, but my actions did nothing. I could feel his skin and clothes under my hands as well as I could when I was alive, yet he didn’t notice me at all. I was a weak ghost—and getting weaker by the second.

So I wrapped my arms around Titinius and kissed him. What else could I do? He was about to die. I was about to fade into nonexistence. At least we could, in some twisted way, go together. My tears dripped onto Titinius’ cheek.

He blinked.

I jumped away, watching him closely, not daring to move.

Titinius dropped the sword, and put a hand to his lips, then to his cheek, feeling a tear that wasn’t his own. Who knew that ghost tears were the same as human tears?

“You promised you wouldn’t kill yourself,” I breathed once again, and this time, Titinius saw me.

His eyes went very wide, and he stretched a hand towards me as if to check that I was really there. I took his hand, squeezing it, savoring the feeling of final contact between us. A second later, I’d faded even further—my hand became intangible, and Titinius’ slipped away. But the connection had been made, and he could still see me.

“Titinius, if you love me, don’t do this to yourself.”

He swallowed nervously, eyes shifting between the sword and my pleading face. “If I die, we can be ghosts together.”

His hand moved towards the sword again, but I threw out an arm to stop him. “No! That isn’t how it works. Ghosts don’t stay on Earth forever. Look at me. I’m fading.”

Titinius said nothing, but the fresh tears on his face told me everything.

“Don’t kill yourself,” I whispered. “You have so much of your life ahead of you.”

A pause. Then he slowly nodded.

My vision was becoming blurry. I could barely see my ghostly hand in front of me. But I focused all of my remaining attention on Titinius. Yes, I was going—but I wasn’t going to go without saying goodbye to my best friend. My intangible hand drifted across his cheek.

“Goodbye, my friend. I love you.”

“Goodbye,” Titinius breathed back. “Thank you, Cassius.”

I smiled—the first real smile that had crossed my face for a while—and disappeared.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. apparently i like writing ghost fics  
> 2\. i don't actually know much about the "rules" for ghosts (does every dead person become a ghost? how long do they stay a ghost? are they intangible? who can see them?) so i just made some up


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